A Muhlenberg College junior started quickly in both rounds of her semi-final game on the college championship of television show “Jeopardy” on Monday, but couldn’t match the buzzer mastery of her two opponents and lost all her money betting on an incorrect “Final Jeopardy” answer.

Ariella Goldstein, 20, of Cortlandt Manor, N.Y., still took home a $10,000 check for her third-place finish, which she said she’ll use to help pay back college loans. The winner of Monday’s game, Eric Betts of Emery University, will face the winners of today’s and Wednesday’s games in a two-day final for $100,000.

“I had a great experience,” Goldstein, who was back home on summer break, said by phone Monday. The shows were tapedin April in Los Angeles, but contestants aren ‘t allowed to reveal how they fared until after the show airs.

Goldstein made it to Monday’s game by scoring the highest total of any non-winner and securing a wildcard spot among the nine semifinalists. Fifteen students competedin five games last week; Goldstein was second in her Friday contest with $18,401.

She started Monday’s game quickly, correctly answering that the game show in which contestants “choose from 26 hot babes holding 26 briefcases on this hit game show” was “Deal or No Deal.” She also correctly answered the second question to tally $600 before Betts or Scott Menke, a Flemington, N.J., resident who attends Johns Hopkins University, could score.

But two quick answers from Menke and an $800 answer by Betts put Goldstein in third – a place shewould hold for the rest of the game except for a brief run to start Double Jeopardy. She hadonly two more correct answers and a miss in 19 questionsto close out the Jeopardy round with just $400 – far behind Bett’s $7,200 and Menke’s$2,600.

But Goldstein started Double Jeopardy with a correct answer, then got the first Daily Double and bet the most she could -- $2,000 – on the question “This European capital les on an plain near the southern end of the arctic peninsula.” She correctly answered , “What is Athens” to go back into second place.

She answered just one of the next nine questions, then made a last effort with four correct answers in a row to closed just $400 behind Menke. But it was her last correct answer, and Double Jeopardy closed with Menke at $15,200, Betts at $13,600 and Goldstein at just $8,000.

Goldstein bet all her money on the Final Jeopardy question in the catagory “Word Origins,” only to incorrectly answer “Before its use in journalism, it meant a boundary beyond which straying prisoners would be shot.”

She said, “headline,” but Betts correctly answered “deadline,” giving him $23,999 and the win. Menke also wrote “headline” and bet $3,199 to finish with $12,001.

Goldstein said her opponents’ mastery of the buzzer helped them.

“I could have played better,” she said. “I knew the answers to most of the questions.”

Menke was so quick on the buzzer that durin his preliminary game, he scored $25,199 – “an obscenely huge number,” she said.

Goldstein, an American Studies major, said she was relieved to see Menke also wrote “headline” for Final Jeopardy, and that she made it to the semi-final round.

“My goal was to make it to the second round,” she said. “Nobody wants to lose in the frirst round.”